SIBC × Baird — BrightView Holdings

My first SIBC engagement was with Baird in the fall of 2025, where our team built a leveraged buyout model on BrightView Holdings (NYSE: BV) — the largest commercial landscaping company in the United States, operating across Maintenance Services and Development Services.

We structured a 100% acquisition at a $2.64 billion enterprise value and a $1.47 billion equity purchase price, a 30% premium to the then-current share price, implying 6.9x 2026E EBITDA with 4.5x debt-to-EBITDA at entry and 65.2% LTV. Our base case assumed a five-year hold and a 7.5x exit multiple, producing a 17.2% IRR and 2.21x MOIC. We stress-tested that across three operating scenarios — a bear case returning 2.7% IRR / 1.14x MOIC, our base, and a bull case at 25.8% IRR / 3.16x MOIC — alongside DCF sensitivity grids spanning 5.5x to 7.5x exit multiples and 7.5% to 10.5% discount rates.

A core part of the investment thesis was BrightView's roll-up opportunity. Commercial landscaping is extraordinarily fragmented — roughly 693,000 businesses, with the top four firms controlling under 5% of total revenue, against a $219.8 billion addressable maintenance market. BrightView's existing route density is what makes it a credible consolidation platform: established scale accelerates the integration of bolt-on acquisitions and amplifies synergies into EBITDA margin expansion in a way a smaller acquirer could not match.

We paired that with a second lever — converting Development Services customers into recurring Maintenance contracts, turning one-time project revenue into a durable base — and evaluated credit structure, debt covenants, and exit paths including an IPO re-listing, a strategic sale, and a secondary buyout. The engagement gave me a deep foundation in LBO mechanics, private equity return analysis, and M&A strategy in fragmented markets.